Is my Mother or Father a Narcissist? – How to Tell

The Narcissist Parent: Traits and Signs of Narcissistic Abuse

Are you constantly arguing with one of your parents and considering that they might be a narcissist, now that you are an adult and are starting to see things differently? Perhaps you’ve heard about narcissism and are trying to figure out if your mother or father exhibits narcissistic traits. This article aims to help you answer these questions for yourself.

As terrifying as it can be to even consider, “Is my mom or dad really a narcissist?” it is crucial to identify if there is a problem and how you can cope with it. Understanding if their behavior is narcissistic will help alleviate some of the hurtful feelings, as you’ll comprehend why they act in ways that seem inexplicably mean but you can’t pin point exactly what’s wrong.

If you have a narcissistic parent, whether a narcissistic mother or father, it is important to recognize if you’ve been experiencing narcissistic abuse throughout your life up until now. This awareness is the first step toward understanding the signs and traits of a narcissistic parent. Recognizing these behaviors is crucial because it can help break the cycle of abuse in your life, preventing it from affecting future generations.

The Codependent Parent and the Narcissist Parent

When we talk about a narcissistic family, there is generally one narcissistic parent and another parent who is codependent or acts as an enabler. The codependent parent supports the narcissistic parent’s need to be the “alpha” of the family, allowing them to make all the significant decisions or simply do whatever they want to. This dynamic applies whether the narcissist is the mother or the father.

According to Shawn Meghan Burn, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the California Polytechnic State University, “codependent relationships are a specific type of dysfunctional helping relationship.” Burn defines a codependent relationships as dysfunctional, because one person supports or enables the other person’s addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.

Introspective Questions to Identify Narcissistic Abuse

Below are several questions that will help you introspect on your family issues. Try to view your past history as if under an external lens. If it’s challenging to remember specific situations, consider writing on a journal to document things that have upset you, and then review these points.

This will help you to understand if you are having problems that relate to narcissistic abuse and if one of your parents is a narcissist or not.

1/6 – Levels of drama

• Are you always clashing with your mom or dad? Is there constant chaos that leaves you drained afterwards?
• Does one parent often try to impress the other by making you look bad?
• Do situations escalate quickly over minor things?

2/6 – Life’s decisions

• Do you often feel incapable of making your own life decisions without their help or advice?
• Do you feel like you always need their approval before making any significant life choices? Is it expected that they decide everything for you?
• Do they try to micro-manage your life? Do they always expect to know exactly what you’re doing?
  • For example, if you answer the phone, do they say, “Where are you? What are you doing?” and expect a detailed answer?
• Do you feel like you have to hide your real personal issues from them – your feelings, situations, relationships – because you know they’ll disapprove, judge, or criticize you?

3/6 – Shame and Guilt

• Do they accuse you of not “loving” them enough?
• Do they blame you for their inability to handle everyday issues, making it seem like it’s your responsibility?
• Do they pin the blame on you when things go wrong in their lives?
• Do they only show love when you do something they want you to do?

4/6 – Is it all about them?

• Take a closer look at how they talk about other people and situations in their lives. Do they always end up blaming or criticizing others, whether it’s at work, or it’s a bad doctor, the man on the driveway, or a friend who did something wrong? Are others always to blame? Do they criticize everyone but never themselves?
• Whenever you are out with them in public, have you noticed that they always seem to get “special” treatment, or they expect to get it and become angry if others don’t immediately address their problems?
  • Do they act as if they are above everyone else? For example, they don’t always follow traffic rules, they park wherever they want, skip queues and act ignorant to get ahead, forget things for doctor’s appointments but expect the staff to resolve the issues, or visit the mechanic at random hours and expect immediate service, getting angry if they don’t receive special treatment.
• When you achieve something and want to share it with them, does it feel like you shouldn’t do it?
  • If you share your achievements, do they seem jealous?
  • Do they respond with things like, “I also did that…” or “I used to know that too” or “I did that too, but then this…” or “Your cousin Jimmy also studies that, and he’s really good, he won the…”?

5/6 – Talking about topics

• Is it always hard to express your opinion, especially when its different from theirs?
• Can you have a genuine conversation where you tell them what you didn’t like about their behavior, and they simply accept it and apologize without any drama (accusations, shaming, blaming, excuses, etc.)?
• Do they make you feel bad for having your own opinions, as if you are somehow not allowed to have an opinion about anything? Do they constantly try to change your mind and tell you how wrong you are about a situation, topic, idea, or belief, whether big or small? And if you don’t agree with them, do they start insulting you, directly or indirectly, or say things like, “You’re too young to understand” or “You’ll eventually understand you’re wrong”? Do they get angry if you don’t accept their opinions?
  • After sharing your opinions, do your parents accept them, or do you have to battle every time your views differ from theirs?
  • Is it hard to express yourself and your points of view because you feel like they will always be against you on absolutely everything you share or say?
  • Is there a pattern where you usually end up accepting their thoughts, comments, ideas, and decisions? Do you do this out of fear or just to avoid the drama that follows if you don’t?
• If you live with both parents, have you had arguments where you and your codependent parent try to explain that the other parent is wrong, but the narcissist sees it as an attack on their integrity?
  • Does the narcissist start yelling, crying, blaming you both for being mean, and ending the conversation with a lot of drama, acting like a child?
  • Do they generally end up crying and blaming both of you, then insulting you, directly or indirectly?
• When your narcissist parent is wrong about something and you try to explain that their behavior wasn’t right, do they listen?
  • Or do they twist your words, shift the blame, or say it’s your fault for their behavior?
  • Do they claim “memory loss” and imply you’re lying or making fun of them?
  • Do they go into defensive mode, finding faults in you and recalling all the bad things you’ve ever done in your life, even if it’s irrelevant to the current situation? Do they get enraged and blame everyone and everything but themselves?

6/6 – Limits and boundaries

• When you are with them, do they always get their say?
• Can you say you need privacy and time alone? Do you struggle to have your privacy or set boundaries because they always want to know where you are, where you’re going, or what you’re doing? Do they make you feel guilty for asking for privacy and boundaries?
  • Are they always pushy in a way that you can’t lock doors, or ask them to leave you alone?
  • Example: If you live alone but not far from them, do you feel like they can barge into your house unannounced any time of the day and so you are constantly on edge when you get a call from them, not knowing if they will ask you to go somewhere immediately when they’ve decided to, or do something immediately because they always have some kind of emergency going on that you have to help them with?
  • Example: If you refuse to do things they ask, or go places with them, do they insult you directly or indirectly, or say things like “I’ll never help you again!” “You are so ungrateful, I was just trying to help you with x, y, z”.
• Do they demand you to be with them all the time and blame you if you don’t whenever they are with you?
  • Do they always want you available for them, no matter the time, making you feel terribly guilty if you can’t? Does this happen often, leaving you constantly feeling guilty because of their constant accusations?
  • Do you feel like you are constantly being controlled by them? Do they threaten you in any way or use intimidation to keep you compliant or to manipulate your behavior into doing the things that they want you to do, regardless if you said you can’t/don’t want to?
  • Do they demand things urgently as if you’re their personal servant, never considering if you’re available or have any ongoing issues or just don’t feel like it? Is it always about their plans and emotions, never about how you feel?
• Do you feel like you have to be constantly productive in front of them? As if you can’t even take a break, or else they’ll find something for you to do in the house the second they see you resting?
• Do you feel like a prisoner of your own life, unable to make decisions, and go anywhere when they are around?
  • Do you feel like you’re on a leash when you’re with them, having no say and just accepting their decisions? For example, if the family is going out, does the narcissistic parent always the one deciding on where to go, where to eat, at what time to leave, where to park (what rules to break, who to scream at, who to ask for a “wee favor” or special treatment, etc.)?
  • Whenever they are home, do you feel like you have no time for yourself?

Uncovering the Signs of Narcissistic Abuse

If you can relate to the situations described above, there’s a good chance you might have a narcissistic parent.

The following list provides a more simple summary of generalized narcissistic behaviors:

• Lack of empathy
• Lack of regard for other’s boundaries and limits
• They think rules don’t apply to them
• Expect special treatment
• They have big fantasies of their grandiosity/self-importance
• They are very superficial and very concerned with appearances
• Difficulty regulating emotions, prone to tantrums
• Get angry really quickly, especially if they don’t get their way
• Hypersensitivity to criticism

If you’re still unsure, check out my previous post on recognizing if your life has always been like this without you realizing it, with tips and tricks to help you “go back in time”.

For a more detailed list of narcissistic parent’s traits and behaviors, read this article here.

Why is the Narcissist Parent this way?

Narcissistic parents are extremely terrified by their kid’s independency, as for them, their kids are a source for their narcissistic supply – in other words, their need for validation, attention, love, devotion.

They use (and abuse) their kids and they need total and complete acceptance from their kids. And if that doesn’t happen, they will use their famous above-mentioned tactics of emotional abuse to get their way, famously applying their guilt and blame tactics to their victims.

Again, narcissistic mothers or fathers consider their kids a means to their needs being met. So, they have no boundaries. That is why they do the things they do in the above list. However, all that is done is not completely conscious, as it is the result of their own childhood, as there was that lack of love, good parenting, good support, emotional support, lots of empathy, etc. Because they didn’t have supporting parents that understood the child’s emotional needs, now they try to find that missing love, and their kids are the way they fulfil that need.

But they don’t understand what they are doing. For them, many times, their behavior is not considered abusive. Unfortunately, they never think like they might be wrong or doing something bad for someone else. They can’t feel that normal empathy normal people feel.

The root of the problem – their childhood

Their parents could also also been narcissists, however that is not always the case. Sometimes, parents might have been distant due to work, stress, depression, divorce, multiple partners, substance abuse, or simply not being prepared to have children. The common thread here is that these emotionally absent parents were generally present for grand moments or important events but not for the daily lives of their children.

When children faced difficulties at school or were picked on for not having the latest clothes or gadgets, their parents were often not there to support them. However, these parents would try to be present for special events, such as when children received grades, bought important clothing, won awards, or had school events. As a result, these neglected children ended up focusing solely on external achievements to gain their parents’ conditional love, rather than developing their inner emotional world. So they never learned how to regulate their own emotions because their parents never taught them.

This lack of emotional education is why they now struggle to empathize with others and fail to recognize their own harmful behavior. Often, they might not be aware of the difficulties they are causing. They can believe they are always the victim, feeling attacked whenever their opinions are not accepted – this unconscious behavior comes from their own experiences of poor parenting.

Freud’s exploration of narcissism also talks about the links of childhood with narcissism, specifically the separation-individuation phase, where issues with dependency and autonomy arise due to unempathic parenting. Parents who use their children to fulfill their own unmet needs for admiration, praise, recognition, and achievement contribute significantly to these disturbances. (Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1971; Mahler, 1972; Mahler & Kaplan, 1977; Miller, 1981). This is further explored in “A Principal-Components Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and Further Evidence of Its Construct Validity” by Robert Raskin and Howard Terry.

Final thoughts

If you suspect you have a narcissistic parent, introspection, education and self-awareness are key.

Also practicing self-love and building self-confidence are crucial steps toward healing – find your own ways to accomplish this. Regain your life’s happiness back. Remember what things you used to enjoy doing or always wanted to try.

Seek support from a specialist if necessary to overcome behaviors you might have adopted due to your narcissistic parent.

While you may never change your parent’s behavior, you can change your own, which will benefit you and those around you and your future children – not repeating the same mistakes as our parents did.

Hope this information helps you!

Stay healthy and curious!